Thursday, November 24, 2016

Location, Location, Location

The new narrow gauge layout situated on the far South Coast of New South Wales is located in a similar area to its predecessor which was standard gauge.A new layout also requires new names for the stations, some on the layout will be the same such as Bega and Candelo that were on the previous one.There was no real reasoning behind picking the new names. No study of the towns on the internet or any personal trips to the area to try and capture the flavour of the place. Well for one thing there was never a railway there in the area so no old fellas can tell me that its wrong.Basically I opened a map of the area and picked names that I thought would suit. The stations will be at Bega, Wolumla Junction (Happy Phil?) )This is the junction to Candelo), Pambula, Greigs Flat, Snug Cove (love that name had to include) and terminating at Eden.

Location Diagram

Location of South Coast Rail

The last post had the town of Dunno, quickly made up because I was too lazy to look at the map and give it a proper name. This location will now be Bega which will be my second attempt at this location. I have obtained all the required track and points to lay here. I have stuck with the Peco track and points. I would have preferred had Peco made this track not so rough in appearance but its not worth the extra cost to move over to Micro Engineering track to resolve this minor irritation. Once the track is ballasted and weeded over it looks OK.

Layout Diagram

Updated diagram with town names added

This may not be the final track layout for the whole layout, we are allowed to change our minds as we go along. One thing that the old DC layout suffered from was the style of control panel once prepared in perspex and holes cut for switches and push buttons. This meant the track plan was virtually locked in, but with DCC, control panels are virtually none existant.The shed is partly through its transition from the old to the new layout. I still have tons of crap to get rid of that is sitting on the layout. It will have to go before the new track gets laid. I will also repaint the floor to make it look better, it was last done back in 2009.

Demolition Derby

Work has commenced on getting the town of Bega ready for track laying. The lovely photo of the garratt on the last post has now gone. This was one of my favourite sections and came up nice with the trees and the cutting around the tunnel mouth. We will have to wait and see what pops up here.

Snowing on the South Coast?

The above photo shows that the scenery has started to be stripped back to allow removal of this section. This will then allow this portion of the wall to be repainted to match the front of the shed. You get a sad feeling when all the work end effort goes in a third of the time to demolish than what it took to build in the first place. You have to get over it and move on, I have many photos of this section.

Where Bodalla once stood

This photo shows where the locations of Bodalla and Candelo (upper) were located. One of the down sides of going to O scale is that it takes up much more room. Also shown in the photo is another location where the old track will stay forever (or until the whole layout is demolished). I cannot get to it for removal and the time and effort is also not worth it. Looking at the plan above in this post all of the baseboards to the right of the entry door will be left in situ and I will rework the track through it. There is no point in demolishing it all to lay the track onto modules at this stage.

Bodalla Goods siding - never to be shunted again

The rock wall that has separated Bodalla from Candelo has been removed for future re-use. Luckily I was able to prise it away with little cracking. Bodalla was never a complex yard which is surprising for me. It had a goods siding and another siding that was to go to a livestock unloading point. Never had a single shunt into it!.

A high shot showing the removal work

In the above shot can be seen the second location of the turntable for Candelo. It was never operated in either location. This may show up the downside of having a large layout, too many projects and not enough time to complete them all. One of the O scale buildings is in place to gauge how much more room is gobbled up in this scale. A lonely NQR wagon is also there to provide some atmosphere to the scene.So there is progress on the town of Bega. When I get it connected to Eden I will finally have somewhere to come and go from.